Read Online The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner - Free Book Online

audibly, “Five, four, three . . .”
    I threw the soap down the corridor. It bounced off the wall with a thump. Both mercenaries turned tail and ran, causing a ruckus that I augmented by hurling a couple of bedpans I’d been keeping for just this moment. Under cover of the noise and darkness, I leapt from the OR doorway, cleared the gurney that blocked the way forward, and slipped inside the next door along the hall into a room that smelled fiercely of disinfectant.
    This was the main examination room. Every patient passed through here for preliminary inspection and treatment. It might have been full of items I could use for bringing down prey, but I couldn’t see a thing. I had only one weapon left in my arsenal: a roll of suture cord, used for stitching up wounds. I pulled it out of my pocket. The cord was strong and tough, like high-pound-test fishing line—practically unbreakable. I unwound a length, holding the spool in one hand and wrapping the loose end around a small metal clamp I’d taken from the OR. Holding my breath, I waited.
    The pair of mercenaries who’d just run away soon realized there’d been no grenade. “Just a trick,” one man muttered. “A lousy trick!” Unwisely, the man stormed back without waiting for his partner; I suppose he was eager to dish out payback on those who’d fooled him. In the dark, of course, he couldn’t see. After bumping into the wall once—bumping hard, by the sound of it—he continued forward a little more slowly, dragging his fingers along the wall to keep himself oriented. He must have thought his opposition was still on the far side of the gurney. He had no idea I was inches away, silent and unseen.
    I located my target by sound; he was quite the noisy fellow, still grumbling under his breath, “Just a lousy trick!” My ambush silenced the grumbling along with his breath: suture cord circled the man’s throat from behind in a cuttingly effective garrote. The thug struggled a bit, but couldn’t squeeze out a sound . . . nothing except a soft squirt as the suture cord sliced into his skin.
    It was over quickly. Four down. And as I lowered the corpse to join the growing pile by the gurney, I helped myself to the strangled man’s Uzi.
    A moment later, the mercenary’s partner plodded up. He heard me moving in the dark. “Charlie?” he said. “Charlie?”
    I could have been subtle; but why?
    It’s traditional to say SMGs sound like
buddah-buddah-buddah,
but I’ve always found Uzis are just a loud bright
trrrrrrr.
    Two bursts at head level.
Trrrrrrr. Trrrrrrr.
    Five down.
    Ten men—nine by me, and one by the guard’s lucky shot—had now been eliminated. The remaining six might all have been injured or worse in the furor upstairs, but there was no way to tell.
    I rummaged briefly through the heap of fallen gunmen, searching by feel for useful equipment. I found nothing but Uzis . . . not even another Kaybar. In a way, that was good news. If none of these hooligans had night-vision goggles or even a Maglite, I could breathe a little easier. Even better—sort of—I found no more silver-armor grenades. It would have been nice to get my hands on another, but I took solace in knowing that mirror shells weren’t standard equipment for
every
mercenary between me and the exit. If I was lucky, none of the remaining attackers had one of the little silver devils. After all, magic armor force fields must be expensive, right? Perhaps this group of mercenaries could only afford two grenades all told.
    Especially since these thugs were clearly second-rate. Or third-rate. Poorly equipped and poorly coordinated. It didn’t say much for Reuben that his capture had been assigned to twits. Still, there’d been sixteen of them—quite a few to send after only one man. Whoever commanded this crew might have thought quantity would make up for quality. Or maybe there was more going on than met the casual eye.
    I’d think about that later. For now, I had to finish my pest